The Skeleton Stuffs a Stocking Page 8

  We got home just in time for dinner. Andrew, Phil’s poorly groomed grad student, was already at the dining room table, so I took the sugar skull bag up to the attic and let Sid reassemble himself up there. Sometimes he listens in on dinners even if he can’t sit at the table for some reason, but he was no more interested in Andrew’s dissertation than Madison or I were. Unfortunately, I was hungry and couldn’t think of a way to avoid the ordeal, so I went back down just as Phil brought out the fixings for tacos.

  As I’d feared, Andrew almost immediately started sharing tidbits from his dissertation research. It’s not that I don’t enjoy discussing literary scholarship—we English professors live for that stuff—but I’ve never been a fan of Nathaniel Hawthorne and had only moderate interest in the Transcendentalists. Even a well-thought-out thesis about them wasn’t going to enthrall me.

  When Andrew finally stopped to take a big bite of taco, Madison kicked me gently under the table and gave me a significant look to let me know that she was counting on me to save her from dying of ennui. I didn’t want to talk about our investigation or Brownie, so I went with the first thing that came to mind.

  “So Mom, Phil, what’s the McQuaid buzz on the looming Bostock strike?”

  Mom said, “It seems to me that the union has reason to be unhappy.”

  “It’s hard to imagine academics walking a picket line,” Madison said.

  “I hope it won’t come to that,” Phil said.

  “If it does,” Andrew said, “a lot of us McQuaid grad students are planning to offer our support. You know, bring them coffee and donuts. We academics have to stick together!”

  Madison asked, “What are they striking about? More money?”

  “It’s more about healthcare and workload,” Mom said. “The administration is trying to cut costs.”

  “Yeah, at the faculty’s expense,” Andrew said. “And you know what I heard? If the strike happens, they’re going to hire adjunct scabs to teach the classes because they know adjuncts won’t respect the picket line. It’s all about the bucks for some people.”

  “People like my mom?” Madison said icily. “The adjunct sitting next to you?”

  His eyes widened. “I didn’t realize you were an adjunct, Mrs. Thackery.”

  “That’s Doctor Thackery,” Madison snapped.

  “Right, I meant Dr. Thackery.” He started stuffing taco into his mouth.

  “Is this true, Georgia?” Phil said, looking troubled. “Are adjuncts going to assist the administration?”

  “Possibly. Bostock may be looking for adjuncts to hire if the strike takes place, and I’ve talked to a couple of my fellow adjuncts who are considering it. No, they’re not thrilled with crossing a picket line, but some people actually need their paycheck to put food on the table. You can’t make tacos with solidarity.” I pointedly didn’t look at Andrew.

  “What do you think, Mom?” Madison asked.

  “Honestly, I’m not sure. On one hand, I think the union has raised points that need to be addressed, and if the administration won’t listen, the union is justified in going on strike. On the other hand, Bostock’s union doesn’t allow adjuncts, so why should adjuncts support a strike that won’t benefit us? On the other hand, if the union loses power, colleges and universities might increase their reliance on adjuncts, meaning most adjuncts will never have a chance to get permanent jobs. On the other hand—”

  “Mom, you don’t have that many hands.”

  “Sorry. If I did, I’d be waving that last one on the students’ behalf because they’ve paid their tuition—or their parents have—and they’re entitled to their classes.” I shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

  My parents nodded thoughtfully because, unlike many tenured faculty, they understood the complications.

  “You know, some of my best instructors have been adjuncts,” Andrew put in. “There’s nothing wrong with taking that route instead of going in for more serious scholarship.”

  Now he had three Thackerys’ worth of glaring. Not only had Madison turned her irate gaze back on him, but Mom and Phil had joined in.

  “Actually,” Phil said in a quiet voice that told me how angry he was, “many adjuncts are just as devoted to their research as their tenured counterparts, and their contributions are just as valuable. The difference is that adjuncts get no support from their colleges, meaning that they have to work twice as hard.”

  “Well, yeah, I mean not all adjuncts—”

  Phil interrupted Andrew, something he almost never does. “Enough of that. Andrew, since you’ve finished eating, I’m sure you’ll want to head back to your apartment to start in on those rewrites I suggested this afternoon. I’m afraid I didn’t have time to prepare dessert.”

  Andrew drew back the hand that had been reaching for yet another taco shell. “I just hope my noisy neighbor isn’t blasting his music the way he usually does. It can be really hard to concentrate on my work.”

  “I’m sure you’ll manage,” Mom said with a devastatingly sweet smile. “After all, Georgia had a baby to tend to when she was completing her dissertation, and she did a remarkable job.”

  “Really?” he said, wiping his mouth and getting up from the table. “That must have been a challenge.”

  I didn’t say anything. In fact, none of us said anything as he packed up his backpack and put on his coat. “Thanks for dinner,” he said, reluctantly walking toward the door.

  “About that noise problem at your apartment,” Phil said.

  “Yes, Professor?” he said hopefully, meaning that he was hoping for an invite to stay and maybe crash on the sofa as he had half a dozen times before.

  “I have some earplugs that might help. Let me get them for you.”

  “Yeah, earplugs. That would be great.”

  Once Andrew had slunk away, Phil said, “Sometimes I forget that your academic career has obstacles mine did not, Georgia. Let me say once again how much I admire your perseverance.” He clapped his hands together. “Now, who wants ice cream?”

  “I thought you said you didn’t make dessert,” I said.

  “That’s true. I didn’t make anything. However, I did pick up a quart of dark chocolate at Arturo’s this afternoon.”

  “I’ll get it,” I said, stopping to kiss both my parents on the way to the kitchen. And on the way back, I smooched Madison, too. Andrew could keep Hawthorne and the Transcendentalists. I had my family and dark chocolate ice cream.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sid kept reading missing person reports all weekend, expanding his search more and more as he tried to find somebody whose description matched Rose’s, but every time he found a possibility, something in the description ruled the person out.

  When Deborah came for dinner Sunday evening, she told me that the police weren’t having any better luck. I didn’t know if I should be cheered by that because it gave us an open field or depressed because if a case was beyond their professional capabilities, what chance did an English professor and a skeleton have?

  I had just finished my last class on Monday when my cell phone rang. “Hello?”

  “Georgia? Dana Fenton here. I’ve got some information for you about your mystery woman. Or about a mystery woman, anyway. Not sure if it’s the one you’re looking for, but—”

  “Anything could help. What can you tell me?”

  “I’d rather not get into it over the phone. Are you free today?”

  After a quick check to make sure I didn’t have any meetings scheduled, I said, “I’ve got time.”

  “Then can you ride back out to the zoo this afternoon? Say around one-thirty?”

  “I’ll see you then.” If I didn’t have to wait too long for the shuttle bus, I should be able to run by the house to pick up Sid and still make it on time. Luckily, Phil was working at home with no graduate students around, so he had Sid’s skull, hand, and phone loaded into the sugar skull bag before I arrived. He even ran it out to the car to
save me time, and being Phil, had also packed a ham sandwich and a can of soda because he knew I’d be missing lunch. With Sid helping out, I was able to eat and drink along the way.

  People swear by their cup holders, but there’s nothing as convenient as having a disembodied skeletal hand help hold your food while you’re driving.

  It was just short of one-thirty when I pulled into the parking lot at the zoo, and I went straight to the carnival’s business trailer. Dana must have been watching for me because she opened the door before I had a chance to knock. Treasure Hunt was sitting on the couch next to a woman I didn’t recognize.

  “Georgia,” Dana said, “this is Sue Weedon. Sue, this is Georgia Thackery, the one I told you about.”

  Sue was between Dana and me in age, maybe ten or fifteen years older than I was, with short gray hair and the tan of somebody who worked outside a lot. Her denim overalls and red flannel shirt were liberally spotted with bright splotches of color, but she’d somehow kept her wire-rimmed glasses clean. I couldn’t say the same for the hand she offered, and when she noticed me looking, she said, “Don’t worry—the paint is dry.”

  As we shook, Treasure Hunt cackled. “You should have told her it was the latest in manicures. You could make a few extra bucks airbrushing towner hands in between rides.”

  I tried for a polite smile, but Dana and Sue just exchanged a knowing glance. Apparently Sue was used to Treasure Hunt’s sense of humor.

  “Have a seat, Georgia,” Dana said, nodding at a chair.

  I put Sid’s bag on the floor next to my feet, aimed so he could see and hear the conversation. “You said you have some information about the dead woman I found?”

  “We might,” Dana said. “After you came to see me, I did some hunting in my files. We didn’t have any employees go missing during those dates you gave me, but I did remember something that happened that week ten years back.

  “A woman came to the show one day looking for work. I knew she was a towner who’d seen too many old movies because she thought she could sign on without giving me her name or her Social Security number. You know, like she was running away to join the circus, which doesn’t happen like that anymore either. We get that a lot.

  “I explained that she had to fill out an application, just like anywhere else. She left a lot of the fields blank—like her address and phone number—but we get a lot of that, too. I didn’t squawk because she gave me enough information that I could do a background check to see if she had a record.

  “I spoke to her for a few minutes, and she seemed okay. Like I said, she’d never been with a show, but she said she’d do anything we wanted her to do. I told her I’d let her know, but since she didn’t have a phone number to give me, she said she’d call the next day for an answer. That afternoon, I spoke to the only reference she’d given me and had decided to hire her on a probationary basis. Only she never called.”

  “Do you still have her application?”

  “After ten years?” She waved her hand at the trailer. “I’ve got two file cabinets, Georgia—I have to clear out the deadwood every few months.”

  “Oh. I don’t suppose you remember her name?”

  She gave me a disgusted look. “Of course not, but lucky for you, I do remember who I called for a reference because it was another carney.” She gestured at Sue Weedon. “It took me a while to track down Sue here—she’s been doing a job in Windsor Locks.”

  “I’m a show painter,” Sue put in.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what that is,” I said.

  Treasure Hunt guffawed.

  “Shut up, Treasure Hunt,” Dana said. “Why would Georgia know about that?”

  “I paint rides and signs for carnivals and amusement parks,” Sue explained, “especially carousels.” She waggled her fingers. “That’s why the paint. I’ve got to use good quality stuff, and it’s the devil to get off. I don’t bother to do a thorough job unless I’m going to have a couple of days off, and since I’m doing a rush job restoring horses for a restaurant—”

  “She doesn’t care about all that,” Dana said impatiently.

  “Nobody cares about all that,” Treasure Hunt muttered. “Most shows have their maintenance crew do their painting. They don’t have to wait until Rembrandt here has time in her schedule, and it’s a heck of a lot cheaper, too.”

  “And pictures from those shows end up on Fail blogs and bad fairground art pages on Pinterest,” Dana retorted. “Meanwhile ridership on our carousel went up ten and a quarter percent after Sue repainted it, which more than made up the extra cost.”

  Apparently Treasure Hunt didn’t dare argue with Dana’s numbers because he just shrugged.

  Dana said, “Go ahead Sue, tell Georgia what she wants to know.”

  “I don’t get called for references that often, so I remember the name of the person who Dana called to ask me about. It was a woman named Annabelle Mitchell.”

  “Annabelle Mitchell,” I repeated. “What can you tell me about her? Had you worked with her?”

  “No, Annabelle was my college roommate. We met when we were assigned to the same dorm room and hit it off right away. Neither of us had any close family living, and we bonded over art, books, movies, and just about everything. We were so much alike that some people thought we were sisters.” She sighed sadly. “Unfortunately, we lost touch after graduation. Well, after she graduated—I dropped out. Then I wandered around a few years before ending up in show painting, and she went back to college.”

  “You mean for an advanced degree?”

  “No, she worked at Bostock College, not far from here.”

  I blinked, startled to hear the familiar name. “She was a professor?”

  “I’m not sure what she did—I hadn’t spoken to her in years. Still, we’d been close enough in college that I didn’t hesitate in recommending her to Dana here. I didn’t find out until months later that she hadn’t come back to take the job. I tried to get in contact with her then, but she never returned my calls. Like I said, we hadn’t been in touch for a long time, so I didn’t think too much of it.”

  “I bet you thought she was too highfalutin to talk to a carney,” Treasure Hunt said.

  “Our lives had gone in a radically different directions,” Sue admitted, “but I didn’t hold it against her. Anyway, the more time passed, the more I started thinking something was wrong, especially when her phone got disconnected. I knew she hadn’t come here, so I tried calling Bostock College, but all they’d say is that she didn’t work there anymore. I didn’t have an address for her, so I checked online to see if I could find her, but though I found a lot of Annabelle Mitchells, I never found the right one. Now you think you may have found Annabelle’s body?”

  “It’s possible. The police in Pennycross have a body they haven’t been able to identify.”

  “The police,” Treasure Hunt said with a snort. “I wouldn’t even talk to them about this, if I were you. We told Sue all about you, Georgia, how you’ve done this kind of thing before. I think you should handle it.”

  “I appreciate your confidence,” I said, “but maybe the police ought to be told.”

  “I’d rather not go to them,” Sue said, and would have said more, but Dana held up her hand.

  “Sue’s got her reasons,” she said firmly.

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I could tell them myself, but since they’d want to know where I got the information, that would be just as bad. An anonymous tip should do the job.”

  “Yeah, like they can’t trace that,” Treasure Hunt said.

  “I’ll use a pay phone or a library computer,” I said, seeing no reason to mention that Sid had talked me into buying a prepaid cell phone a while back for just such occasions. He preferred to call it a burner because that sounded more street.

  “Good plan,” Dana said, rising from her seat. “Hate to chase you off, but I need Sue to do touchup painting on our dark ride while she’s here, and
it has to be dry before we open tonight.”

  “No problem. Ms. Weedon, can I get in touch if I have any more questions about Annabelle?”

  Sue looked at Dana, who nodded, which she took as a sign of approval. “Sure. Let me give you my number.” She fumbled in her overall pocket and handed me a business card for Sue’s Show Painting, which I slipped into the sugar skull bag.

  “Thanks for your help, Ms. Weedon. And you, too, Dana.”

  “What about me?” Treasure Hunt asked.

  Dana snorted. “Why would she thank you? You didn’t do anything.”

  “I stayed out of your way. That ought to count for something.”

  “Thank you, Treasure Hunt,” I said.

  Dana just rolled her eyes.

  I was so happy I wouldn’t have minded thanking him if he had gotten in Dana’s way. Though I neither ran nor danced back to the car, I was humming to myself happily. Sid and I finally had a name to work with.

  Chapter Fifteen

  As soon as the car door was shut and locked, I unzipped the bag to make it easier to talk to Sid.

  “We have a name!” I crowed.

  “We have a name! Now to see if the name matches our body.”

  That concluded the conversation portion of the drive home. Thanks to Sid having had his hand and cell phone in the bag with him, he could go online immediately and start digging up what he could on Annabelle Mitchell.

  “It’s her!” he announced just as we reached Pennycross town limits.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oh yeah. Annabelle Mitchell, a resident of West Litchfield who worked at Bostock College, was reported missing the first week of December, ten years ago.”

  Within minutes of our arrival back at the house, Sid was back in his attic, tapping away at his computer while I looked over his shoulder blade. “This has got to be her,” he said, showing me a news story from the West Litchfield Register.

  “Police are seeking the public’s help in locating a missing woman. Annabelle Mitchell, 36, is described as a white female with brown hair, standing five feet, five inches tall and weighing 140 pounds. Mitchell was last seen leaving her apartment in West Litchfield wearing a dark green parka and blue jeans, police say. She is an employee of Bostock College. Anyone with information is urged to contact the West Litchfield police.”